A tourist wants to see and do the most interesting things available, with a minimum of inconvenience. The tourist wants fond memories of his visit, and maybe more importantly, he wants great stories to tell when he returns home.
A significant portion of a facility's future business comes from the word-of-mouth marketing that it earns by providing tourists with an experience that makes those great stories. Tourists returning with fabulous tales of their own exploits inspire the next season's tourists to venture forth and have those experiences for themselves.
A facility may contain many attractions. Individual rides, restaurants, exhibits, stores, shows, etc. are all part of the value a tourist can experience at a facility. Besides the individual attractions a facility might contain, a facility commonly provides collateral materials such as maps and show schedules.
Too often, this collateral material hits the tourist with a barrage of comic book action balloons: “New!,” “Must See.” Pages and pages of tables showing services, menus, merchandise, age appropriateness, and height restrictions are presented in a dazzling array of color and iconography.
Unfortunately, this frequently amounts to information overload. Its effect is compounded when a person is a first-time visitor, and again when they are from outside the primary marketing region of the facility (and so are unfamiliar with many of the facility's attractions), and again when there is the barrier of a language difference.
Guided tours are very effective in overcoming an unfamiliar visitor's lack of knowledge. The facility's highlights can be put together into a coherent sequence. The tour guide can be responsive to the needs of the tour's members (more so when the tour group is small). Often, the tour guide is fluent in the visitor's native language, which makes the experience less demanding on the visitor, in turn making them more comfortable. There is, however, a significant cost associated with assembling and maintaining a trained, multi-lingual pool of qualified tour guides whose utilization will fluctuate, depending on daily attendance and visitor arrival times.
Thus, self-guided tours are common. A simple printed brochure can provide instructions for getting from attraction to attraction, and call out points of interest between them. Audio walking tours, such as those produced by Antenna Audio (Sausalito, Calif.), play a sound track of directions. Their exemplary production of Alcatraz: Cellblock Tour for Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California, is an audio tour which includes binaural, dramatized productions of prison breaks and encounters with famous inmates. Such tours play on simple audio cassette or CD players over headphones.
The drawback of the printed brochure and audio walking tour is that there is little ability to customize the tour for each visitor. True, the brochures and audio programs can be presented in multiple languages. Both can be taken at a slowed pace—the brochure will wait for the reader's pace, and the audio track can be paused or rewound. But they are inherently linear. Every visitor will follow the same track and have the same experience. There is no ability to customize the experience depending on type of interest or time of entry. If someone enters late in the operating day, the program cannot abbreviate the tour and emphasize the important elements. Should a party include young children, a different selection of shows or exhibits appropriate to their age level cannot be selected.
Interactive audio systems, such as the Inform Wand manufactured and programmed by Acoustiguide Corporation (New York, N.Y.), allow visitors to browse a facility randomly. These systems are used in such facilities as the Louvre in Paris and San Diego Zoo in California. The interactive audio tour systems have limited ability to guide visitors. Typically, one audio track may end with a recommendation for a subsequent track to be played, or item to be examined. As a visitor proceeds through a facility, rooms or areas are tagged with ID numbers and are described in like-numbered audio tracks. Within such areas, visitors wishing more detailed information may enter ID numbers related to individual items or displays. The system is reactive to a visitor encountering a location or item, rather than directing them.
There is a need for a tool or method by which a visitors' interests and abilities, and the temporal situation, can be understood and an appropriate itinerary within the facility created for them.
Prior Art Relating to Attraction Access
Other factors can come into play and degrade a visitor's experience. Long waits in queue are a chief reason certain portions of the population avoid some facilities.
The Walt Disney theme parks make use of a system called FASTPASS® described by Laval et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,173,209. Visitors to a park can either enter the regular queue for an attraction, or they can obtain an express pass to use the express queue. The express pass has a time period during which it is valid. The visitor must present the express pass during the indicated time period in order to bypass the queue and be admitted to the attraction. Obtaining an express pass is achieved by the visitor presenting an ID of some sort, to a kiosk near the ride. An express pass is issued, bearing the next available reservation time. No further express passes will be issued to an ID until the existing express pass has expired. Thus, a “first-come, first-served” virtual queue is created, and the visitor can be in only one virtual queue at a time.
Other systems for managing queue times allow visitors to select a series of attractions in order to make reservations. Mahoney et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,502,806 provides computer terminals for visitors having an ID to make and edit reservations. Turnstiles are equipped with ID readers and so can admit or deny admission to the visitor based on having a timely reservation on the attraction.
In both Laval et al. and Mahoney et al., visitors not having reservations are permitted to line up in a physical queue for the attraction. The attractions are configured with dual approaches. One is a long, physical queue suitable for the visitors who may be waiting over an hour for access to the attraction. The other is a relatively short queue having a gate that admits patrons whose reservations are current, and have thus been waiting in a virtual queue.
The advantage of virtual queuing is significant. While guests are waiting in a virtual queue, they can either be simultaneously enjoy other attractions, shop, or simply relax nearby.
A disadvantage of such systems, however, is that the visitor must either know to visit an attraction to claim a spot in the virtual queue (under Laval et al.) or they must know what attractions to select from the terminal (in Mahoney et al.) It may well be the case that a novice visitor has little or no idea where specific attractions are located (and thus is frustrated in trying to arrive in person to make a reservation). It can also be the case that he is not familiar with the array of attractions available, and thus cannot quickly and efficiently make knowledgeable attraction selections. Further, unless stringent restrictions are imposed, it can be the case that the reservations made by the overanxious visitor cannot actually be kept, as when two consecutive reservations are made for widely separated attractions.
In years past, Disneyland Park (Anaheim, Calif.) made use of ticket books which contained a collection of tickets graded from ‘A’ to ‘E’. These books were sold with one's admission. An ‘A’ ticket was viable admission to any ‘A’ rated attraction. A ‘B’ ticket was viable admission to any ‘A’ or ‘B’ attraction. Typically, the most elaborate and most current attractions bore an ‘E’ designation and the only viable admission was an ‘E’ ticket (which became part of the industry vernacular long before the Internet popularized e-Anything!).
By providing a limited supply of ‘E’ coupons to each visitor, Disneyland operations was able to restrain excessive demand for ‘E’ attractions. The ticket books were arranged to clearly display what tickets designations remained, and what attractions fell into these designations.
Another disadvantage of systems like Laval and Mahoney, is that they do not mitigate unequal demand for various attractions. An extremely popular attraction may find that its FASTPASS® reservations for the entire operating day are dispensed within an hour of the facility's opening. Meanwhile, other attractions may not exhaust their allotment of reservations.
With such an imbalance of demand, the system of Mahoney et al. will fail as late arriving visitors find that there are no reservations available for any of the ‘E’ attractions, or even ‘D’s.
A system and method is needed which will redistribute demand for attractions efficiently, so that a facility is better able to spread demand for its attractions. Further, this would help to limit the adverse impact that a virtual queue size has on a physical queue progress.
Prior Art Relating to Itinerary Generation
A variety of route planning and navigation systems is presently available. These are available both in stationary and portable devices, and can operate standalone or connected, perhaps wirelessly, to a network (such as the Internet). Route planning systems, such as ROADNET 5000® by UPS Logistics Technologies, Inc. (Baltimore, Md.), permits fleets of trucks to efficiently deliver parcels to their destination. Users of America Online, Inc's (Dulles, Va.) mapping services Internet site, www.mapquest.com, or Street Atlas USA™ software on CD-ROM by DeLorme (Yarmouth, Me.), can get point-to-point driving instructions from their desktop computer, or wireless Internet device. In car navigation systems, such as Hertz (Park Ridge, N.J.) NeverLost™, use GPS satellites, an electronic compass, and a geographic database to provide verbal directions to a requested address: “At the next intersection, turn right.”
Such systems are, in part, commercial outgrowths of various solutions to a classic optimization problem from computer science called the “Traveling Salesman Problem,” or “TSP”. The problem is to find the most efficient path that visits each desired destination exactly once, and minimizes the total distance traveled. Many optimized solutions to this problem have been presented in the literature, for example, Donald Knuth (1973) The Art of Computer Programming: Sorting and Searching (vol III). Such solutions are very effective for small or moderate numbers of destinations, such as are encountered in the course of itinerary preparation.
Typically, a TSP solution involves building a graph topologically representative of the set of destinations and the physical pathways between them (e.g. walkways, roadways, rail lines, airline flights, etc.) as appropriate. Each pathway is ascribed a “cost”, perhaps representative of travel time, distance, expense, physical difficulty (as might be pertinent to a hiking trip), or other factors, or a combination thereof. Ultimately, an algorithm is employed to minimize the total “cost” of the overall trip. This would, based on whatever factors were included in the cost, result in the minimization of time, distance, expense, difficulty, etc.
A variation of the TSP problem, called the “Bottleneck TSP” includes a maximum cost limit, such that no path with a cost higher than the limit is permitted in the solution. Such a variation is useful to specify, for example, that an oversized load must be routed only along roads that have sufficient vertical clearances, or that a traveler in a wheelchair should not receive an itinerary directing him to traverse a rampless flight of stairs.
Efficient route planning systems that deal with large numbers of possible targets and having highly optimized computational performance, have been developed. An example is Libby, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,850,617
Specialized, commercial systems have been developed to assist a tourist, or his travel agent, in preparing itineraries. Such systems collect from a prospective traveler a list of desired destinations. The system then sequences those destinations to produce an efficient outcome. An example of such software is TripMaker Deluxe 2000, by Rand McNally (Skokie, Ill.), and similar capabilities are available on their web site at www.randmcnally.com.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,803, “Itinerary Making System” Kanemitsu describes a system which allows selection from a list of destinations, such as a particular museum or a specific beach. In addition, it requires a visiting purpose, such as to appreciate art or to watch the sun set, respectively. With each destination-purpose pair is associated the allowable times, as well as a recommended visiting time. For a museum, allowable times might be the operating hours of the park, however, the recommended time may be a time when crowds have historically been particularly light. For watching the sunset at the beach, the allowable and recommended times may coincide: beginning about a half hour before sunset, local time. Kanemitsu describes a number of convenience features that permit ease of destination and purpose entry. By associating destinations with a variety of categories, his system is often able to assume the purpose of a specified visit.
However, as effective as such systems are, and with all the convenience features they carry, such systems do not address certain needs.
A party visiting a facility, unfamiliar or only partly familiar with its collection of attractions, is at a disadvantage. A significant effort must be expended to determine which attractions are suitable for the party's needs, limitations, and tastes.
Someone unfamiliar with Disneyland may well wonder whether “Fantasmic” is a turbulent roller coaster, a song-and-dance gala stage presentation, or a fireworks show. It is the latter, but how long will it take a visitor to determine that? Is it suitable for an infant? Will grandmother have to transfer from her wheelchair? If the attraction operates on a schedule, when must the party enter the queue? It would take a long time to assimilate and consider the rest of the 60 attractions at Disneyland to determine a short list of suitable and most desirable attractions to visit.
A system or method is needed that allows an unfamiliar visitor to receive a near optimal experience, suited to his (or his party's) tastes, schedule, needs, and limitations. The experience should give a proper overview of the facility, so a tourist does not return feeling that they have missed a key element.
In facilities where most guests can stroll about and see attractions in an arbitrary order, efficient distribution and loading can become a key factor for the facility operator.
Some theme parks, for instance, Universal's Islands of Adventure (Orlando, Fla.), are laid out in a ring. Visitors typically proceed clockwise or counterclockwise from the park entry and encounter attractions consecutively. This leads to long waiting times in queues for attractions near the entrance in the morning, and long waits for attractions halfway around the ring near midday, where the clockwise and counterclockwise travelling parties meet.
Summary of Needs Unsatisfied by Prior Art
There is a need for a tool or method by which a party of visitors' interests and tastes can be understood and an appropriate itinerary within the facility created for them.
A system is needed that will consider a party's needs and limitations to create a personalized itinerary for the party, within the facility.
There is a need for a tool or method by which the spatial and temporal situation of the party and of the facility are considered to make a personalized itinerary for the party, within the facility.
There is a need for a system that will allow a visitor unfamiliar with a facility to create a viable set of reservations to access attractions.
A system is needed that will redistribute demand for attractions in a facility—to moderate demand for popular (i.e., ‘E’) attractions and create demand for other, underutilized attractions.
Similarly, a system is needed that will diffuse demand for attractions within a facility so that excessive demand, perhaps time-of-day dependent demand, or lack thereof, can be moderated.
The present invention satisfies these and other needs and provides further related advantages.